Leadership Team

Alfred Bloom, Vice Chancellor

Bloom joined NYU Abu Dhabi from Swarthmore College, after an 18-year tenure as president. Prior to assuming the presidency at Swarthmore, he served as executive vice president of Pitzer College in Claremont, California. Previously, he was vice president of Academic Affairs and dean of faculty at Pitzer. He was appointed as assistant professor of Psychology and Linguistics at Swarthmore in 1974, and named associate provost there in 1985.

Bloom graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1967. He received his PhD from Harvard University in 1974, and holds honorary doctorates from the University of Richmond and Swarthmore College.

Fabio Piano, Provost

Fabio Piano, Provost

Fabio Piano serves as NYU Abu Dhabi’s chief academic officer, setting the University's academic strategy and priorities, and overseeing academic appointments and faculty affairs. Long before his appointment as provost, Piano was instrumental in developing and advancing NYUAD, helping to craft its innovative undergraduate science curriculum, as well as its distinctive research program. Piano is the director of NYU’s Center for Genomics and Systems Biology in New York.

Piano leads an active research program in genomics and systems biology and has taught at the undergraduate and graduate levels at NYU New York. Prior to serving as a faculty member in Biology at NYU, Piano was a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Fellow at Cornell University, where he studied early embryo development and evolutionary biology.

Piano holds a Laurea from the University of Florence and a PhD in Biology from NYU, where he also received his BA, MS, and M.Phil.

Carol Brandt plays a central role in shaping and implementing NYU Abu Dhabi's commitment to global education and the institution's connections to Abu Dhabi and the UAE.

Brandt joined NYUAD from Pitzer College, where she most recently held the position of vice president for International Programs and Fellowships. Previously, Brandt served as Pitzer's associate vice president of International Programs, director of the program in American College English, and director of Special Programs. She was also a senior lecturer in Modern Languages, Literature, and Culture.

Brandt received a BA and an MA in Linguistics from California State University Fresno.

Linda Mills, Associate Vice Chancellor, Admissions and Financial Aid

Linda Mills, Associate Vice Chancellor, Admissions and Financial Aid

Linda Mills is responsible for student recruitment and financial aid for NYU Abu Dhabi. Mills will continue as NYU’s senior vice provost for undergraduates in the global network university and as professor of Social Work, Public Policy, and Law, with teaching appointments at the School of Law, Silver School of Social Work, and Tisch School of the Arts. Mills is also executive director of the NYU Center on Violence and Recovery.

Mills received a BA from the University of California, Irvine; JD from the University of California, Hasting College of Law; an MSW from San Francisco State University; and a PhD in Health Policy from Brandeis University.

Fatma Abdulla, Senior Vice Provost, Strategy and Planning

Fatma Abdulla, Senior Vice Provost, Strategy and Planning

Fatma Abdulla joined NYU Abu Dhabi from the General Secretariat of the Executive Council, where she was an advisor in the social development sector. Previously, Abdulla was founder and managing director of a strategic advisory firm, Chief Strategy Officer of Dubai Healthcare City, and Dean of Health Sciences, Communication Technology and Education at the Higher Colleges of Technology. Her research interests are in the area of gender and public policy.

At NYUAD, Abdulla works on academic programming and educational planning at the strategic level as well as working closely with leadership on proactively identifying and analyzing all issues that could impact NYUAD’s operations. She is also responsible for academic enrichment and executive and professional education programs.

She received a BS from Mount Saint Mary’s College, MS and M.Phil from California State University and the University of California and a PhD in Higher Education from University of Arizona.

Prior to NYUAD, Farley most recently served as the inaugural Dean of Students at Yale-NUS College in Singapore where he built support structure for a global student body, oversaw student organizations, residential life, athletics, wellness, orientation, and Family Weekend.

He also served as the Dean of Higher Education at Academies Australasia in Sydney and was the Dean of Jonathan Edwards College at Yale University.

Farley received a BA in Philosophy and History from Calvin College and a PhD in American History from the University of Pennsylvania.

Sunil Khambaswadkar heads the human resource function for NYU Abu Dhabi. Khambaswadkar brings to NYUAD over 30 years of global experience in human capital leadership in both higher-education and corporate sectors.

Prior to taking on this role in October 2008, Khambaswadkar had served in senior leadership capacities in diverse international locations and organizations. He is a Certified Human Resources Professional from the Human Resources Professionals Association of Canada.

Sehamuddin Galadari, Senior Vice Provost of Research Outreach, Managing Director of the NYUAD Research Institute, and Research Professor of Biology

Sehamuddin Galadari, Senior Vice Provost of Research Outreach, Managing Director of the NYUAD Research Institute, and Research Professor of Biology

Bryan Waterman, Director of Core, and Associate Vice Provost for Undergraduate Academic Development

Bryan Waterman, Director of Core, and Associate Vice Provost for Undergraduate Academic Development

Additional Members of the NYU Abu Dhabi Core

Andrew Hamilton, NYU President

Martin Dorph, NYU Senior Vice President, Finance and Budget

Katherine E. Fleming, NYU Provost

Ellen Schall, Senior Presidential Fellow

Robert Young, Dean, Arts and Humanities

Robert Young, Dean, Arts and Humanities

Robert Young is Julius Silver Professor of English and Comparative Literature at NYU, and Dean of Arts and Humanities at NYU Abu Dhabi. Before joining NYU in 2005 he was Professor of English and Critical Theory at Oxford University, where he served as Chair of English, Director of Research, and Bursar of Wadham College.

He has held research or visiting professorships at the University of Hong Kong, Center for Advanced Studies, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany, Monash University, St John’s College, Oxford University, University of Puerto Rico, and University College, Galway, Ireland.

His research interests range across the fields of cultural and political history, literature, philosophy, photography, psychoanalysis and translation studies, with a particular focus on colonial history and postcolonial theory. His work has been translated into over twenty languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Gujarati, Hebrew, Persian, Tamil, and Turkish. He is a corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Academia Europaea.

Samer Madanat, Dean, Engineering

Samer Madanat, Dean, Engineering

Samer Madanat is the Xenel Distinguished Professor of Engineering, former Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and former Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California at Berkeley.​ ​

He received a BSc in Civil Engineering from the University of Jordan in 1986, and a MS and PhD in Transportation Systems from MIT in 1988 and 1991 respectively.

Madanat’s research and teaching interests are in the area of transportation infrastructure management, with an emphasis on modeling facility performance, the development of optimal management policies under uncertainty, and developing solutions for improving the sustainability of transportation systems.

David Scicchitano, Dean, Science

David Scicchitano, Dean, Science

David Scicchitano is responsible for faculty recruitment, leading the science departments, and developing research.

Since 2004, he has served as director of undergraduate science initiatives for NYU's College of Arts and Sciences. Previously, Scicchitano was a National Institutes of Health (NIH) postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University in California. For more than 10 years, he has served as a peer reviewer for the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, and as an advisor to McGraw-Hill on biology education.

Scicchitano holds a PhD in Physiology from the Pennsylvania State University Milton S. Hershey College of Medicine and a BA summa cum laude in Chemistry from Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania.

Hervé Crès, Dean, Social Sciences

Hervé Crès, Dean, Social Sciences

Hervé Crès is a Professor of Economics at New York University in Abu Dhabi, where he officiates as Dean for the Social Sciences.

He has been previously a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, at HEC, Paris, and at Sciences Po, Paris; he has also taught at the University of Copenhagen, the University of Geneva, Koç University in Istanbul and Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. His main research interests are in general equilibrium theory, social choice theory and formal political theory, with a particular emphasis on the study of the role of collective decision mechanisms to fix market failures.

Crès has held various leadership positions, among which Deputy Director of HEC Grande Ecole, and Vice-president and Interim Director at Sciences Po.